1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a method for constructing a data base in a medical image control system so that signals representing a medical image such as a radiation image may be retrievably filed.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Many medical images have heretofore been utilized when medical research is done in, for example, medical facilities such as hospitals. When medical treatments are given, medical images are also relied upon as sources of information. Most of the medical images are radiation images. In recent years, many computed tomography (CT) images, magnetic resonance (MR) images and the like are also utilized.
Medical images should be stored for investigating changes in the diseases of or injuries to patients, and it is legally stipulated that the medical images be stored for a predetermined period. Therefore, in hospitals or the like, the number of stored medical images increases from day to day. Medical images have heretofore been stored in the form of hard copies. However, storing the hard copies requires a large storage space, and burdensome operations for control and retrieval of the medical images in hospitals or the like must be conducted.
Accordingly, it has recently been proposed to employ an electronic filing method in which medical images are retrievably filed as image signals on a recording medium such as an optical disk. In cases where the medical images are filed in this manner on a recording medium, the space requirement and the burden of image storage are reduced, and image retrieval becomes easy and quick.
In general, three or four medical images such as radiation images are recorded per patient (object), and 50 to 100 medical images in total are recorded for a patient who is hospitalized for an extended period. In a medical image control system utilizing an electronic filing method as mentioned above, the names of patients are recorded as one of several items making up image retrieval signal data in an image retrieval data base. Therefore, even though many medical images per patient may be filed, all of the medical images related to a patient can be retrieved quickly when the name of the patient is specified.
However, in cases where many medical images per patient are filed, though the images can easily be retrieved, physicians or the like cannot readily discriminate between medical images important to a diagnosis and other medical images. Physicians or the like must select the images based on memory, which is unreliable, or must reproduce the medical images at random.
It is very uneconomical and time-consuming to reproduce a large number of medical images which are not required by a physician making a paricular diagnosis.
Also, since the amount of data which can be recorded in the image retrieval data base is limited, new data cannot be recorded in the data base if image retrieval signal data corresponding to the medical images which are not required by a physician making a particular diagnosis or those which will probably not be used in a diagnosis process are left in the data base for ever.